A very full-unfilling day.....

Arrived in S'pore at slightly after 6 am,greeted by the yellow lights of a city stirring to life.

After arriving at the terminus, I took a bus to the central business district even as the earliest white-colour slaves were arriving for another torrid day of work.

I walked to the Starbucks outlet and began to attempting to get on the Net. Fortunately, I hadn't deleted a SMS that contained log-on details of a previous free account from icellwireless.net.

IT WORKED!

So then, onto my first important task of the day: selling the unit trusts that I had bought from September 2008 till January 2009.

But I had to be sure to the Inland Revenue Department did not continue to deduct my monies using the GIRO payment system even though I was no longer earning an income.

So after failing to reach them at their hotline, I decided to personally enquire at their head office to make insurance doubly sure.

After waiting for about 15 minutes for my queue number to be called, I finally sat face to face with a petite smiling lady, and I eased up a little.

As she generated the table of deductions on my account dating back to 2007, my heart sank a little as she pointed to a figure that began with '1372', but she eventually led me to the end of the statement,which showed a series of -77.70 figures, and she went on to explain that those were sums owed to me by the Tax Dept!

Waves of relief swept over me as I realised my unit trust proceeds were no longer in any danger from the tax authorities.


I proceeded to make my way to a hotel restricted to gays, that I had discovered just the night before, called 'Queen's Resident'.I opted for a discounted $72 room called a 'suite', deciding against the $48 single room, as I was feeling generous after the incredibly good tax-related news. The best thing was the room had a wireless internet connection so I had not brought my laptop in vain!

I'm filling out the blog entry from there now :)

Then came what I suspected I would regret doing, but did it anyway: paid a visit to the sauna(Club One Seven).

Suffice it to say that I went bold and tried to make the first move by approaching a
rather muscular guy,but got a barely-disguised cold shoulder. I even tried a second time, but failed again.

He went off with a fattish guy and tried fucking him,but after washing himself off, he came back again to cruise.But I pretended he was invisible this time.

Then I tried to make the moves on a skinnier,but sinewy young man, but again was spurned, though less rudely.

After walking around in the dark alleys and standing around for quite a bit, a shorter paler guy approached me, intent on some fun, but after I sucked his dick 3 times and he tried to get mine to stand as erect as his, but failed, he promptly unlatched the door to the room we had entered and just left.

What a waste of my precious 23 dollars!

Fortunately, I was feeling generous towards myself after so much good news on the financial side, and so the expenditure did not hurt that badly.

When the Ellen videos wear off...

Had an uplifting morning watching videos of celebrity lesbian funnywoman Ellen DeGeneres on youtube.

Her appearance on Oprah really caught my attention, mostly for her assertion that she was able to change her down situation after coming out by embracing compassion and being true to herself(the sexuality aspect was paramount,of course).

I have been in a blue funk for about 2 weeks now. After being happy for over 8 months privately tutoring from home, the realisation hit me that I'm likely to be ill-equipped to try my hand at another full-time job. The income from this private tutoring 'stint' has been drying out quite rapidly as pupils exams began to conclude and the dreaded cancellation calls come.

It was then that I realised how important financial security is tied to my happiness. Mainly because I've let it do so for almost all my life.

Being a person who isn't ambitious about pursuing riches, extraordinary or otherwise, I lapse into despair reflexively when I stop earning an income.

Spurred on by a sense of urgency at this unfavourable development, I have seriously started writing my first book, with the plot already figured out roughly 80% of the way through.

But in the past two days, as I was left in the house alone, I found myself losing the motivation to continue the tale.

Stretching my resolve, I continued the tale yesterday before bed, extending it to roughly 3500 words in total.

I can't tell if I can push myself to continue tonight as fatigue is already weighing on my eyelids(due to only about 6 hours sleep yesterday), but I'll try...

The Angry Walk

A quick decision saw me traipsing around Canning Garden(the environs where I live) on foot, to Wooley Food Court for an early dinner, and then round the other way back home, buying the Financial Daily, some desserts, and some dark grapes along the way.

The journey, with all the detouring, is estimated (by me ) to be at least 8km long,and is my first real piece of exercise in a year!

Had a leisurely iced tea and chicken rice when I reached the food court at around some minutes past four. The stall was not quite ready to serve me yet, so I took out the Sunday supplement out while I waited and read some of the articles there, especially about the World of Walls project initiated by a German historian to coincide with the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The realisation hit me then that his opening words about how walls that are built to protect also keep out Life, applied to me so well!And a sense of a Provident moment hit me just then...

I even bought a snack for the maid and felt good washing the sweat from my body during the bath.

Along the return journey, I saw a rather faint rainbow in the sky,and stopped at a shop, 'Pretty Pets' to admire and adore a clutch of puppies all averaging 6 weeks old: Beagles in the majority, and Rottweilers making up the numbers(10 in total).

Seeing them stirred in me the urge to own my own place so that I can rear them myself.

But that dream is still a distance away, because I aim to pay for my first house in cash upfront settlement.

Anyway, I timed my 'trek' such that I returned home just before it got dark, at around 7:12 pm.


I can safely say that I've rid myself of the helpless frustration that came immediately upon opening my eyes to the dark side of my mothers' personality(yet again).

Still,my knees are tingling with the effort as I'm blogging now, and this invigorates me more than anything!

Tomorrow, I have to take action & return her the 'bribe' she gave me and flatly refuse to be part of her scheme.

Extracts...

"You only lost money...which you can replace! I lost my innocence in that moment of neglect!Innocence which I can never replace, and which has affected me psychologically, and will do so until the day I die,something which I have thought of doing many times!"

Something I'm 'dying' to say to my 'father', whom I'm losing more and more regard for as each day unfolds,if I haven't lost all of it already.


On another(but related) train of thought: Why is my family so CHEAP?

Granted that my mother came from an impoverished large family background, my 'father' experienced none of the sort, but despite both of them paying lip service to the non-omnipotence of money, their unguarded words reveal how they seem to value that inanimate thing more highly than anything, probably a close second only to their own lives.

I feel down whenever I think that none of them ever(or even came close to a shade of a shadow of doing it) thought of, or volunteered to help me out when I said that $4000 was too expensive for a return airticket to Sydney this Decemnber, when my 'father' had happily paid for the previous year's journey to the Gold Coast to visit my brother(who incidentally has never volunteered to help his own parents to go into retirement despite doing well in recession-free Australia).

But I've discovered that my own modest generosity to others is truly an anomaly in my family.

Just recently,having decided to forgo the Christmas vacation, I decided to try to go to Bangkok(which I can afford),which my parents were invited to go on during the same time frame. Despite not being able to take up the offer because of the clash, my 'mother' made me feel like I was trying to have a free holiday with her comments.

Of course, I admonished her strongly and replied that she was known to be 'cheap' and I wondered aloud how people who were so well-off could be so 'cheap', and said angrily that my family was also known to be 'cheap, insisting all the time that I had already stated my intention to pay my own way.

I also added for good measure that she should hug her money all the way to the grave and : 'Let's see how much you can take to heaven!'.


This episode has shown me how little I matter to the people whom I'm supposed to matter to.

It also destroys what remnants of sentimentality I have towards almost everyone whom I'm related to: the realisation hit me that I can't count on ANYONE to show me even the smallest iota of humankindness.

I've decided to steel myself(despite my softheartedness) against the urge to be generous to these people

What a full Sunday...by my standards!

Went out at 9-ish am for a brunch at a famous pork-soup outlet with my parents' church friends, some of whom I've known for some time already, and a Canadian-Indonesian couple who have resettled here for their retirement.

After the meal, we headed out to the latter's new as-yet-unfinished house amidst the scenic Ipoh limestone peaks.

Had fun drying my rotund Chihuahua, Sugar, after her bath after I returned.

Then I carried out my usual tutoring commitments from 1:30 to 3:00 pm, and then from 4:30 to 6:30 pm.

Was invited to attend a Catholic church's get-together a few days back and I took up the offer & so I arrived with my uncle at 7:20 pm, to find that the hall where the dinner was held was already 70% occupied.

At first I resigned myself to awkward silence at our table number 32 for the couple of hours or so during the 10-course meal.

However, an unusual thing happened contrary to my initial expectations: we gradually warmed up to each other through intermittent smiling and almost everyone taking turns to serve the food and pour the tea.

When I left at around 10 pm, I was smiling and shaking the hands of those at my table, and it almost felt as if we were never ever strangers!

My usually aloofness and dismal ability to interact with strangers did not gain the upper hand this time!

And this episode left me encouraged that, even at the ripe 'old' age of 36, I can still go out to make friends out of total strangers, while casting aside my instinctive suspicion of people unknown.

My 222nd post...and some wierd dreams.

Since I started this blog on the last day of February 2005, I have made 221 entries, and so this will be my 222nd one =)

I have to thank my two-time fling, Ray Lim Rui Wen, for this, as it was he(although he has stopped following my blog for many a year now) who introduced me to the joys of blogging as a great mode of self-catharsis!

Just a brief mention of my dream-invaded sleep of the past several weeks, which only enter my recollection when my consciousness coasts just below the surface of full wakefulness, like the dolphin coasting just below the sea waves.

Usually, my remembrance is limited to the bits(<5 minutes) just before I open my eyes and become aware of my environs.

But they have been wierd fantasies nonetheless!

Like the night before last, when I dreamt I was in a Arizona park prospecting for diamonds,which tourists had done regularly for years there, together with none other than my own elder brother.My recollection of what little substance there was in that dream has faded since then, although I clearly remember finding nothing of value.


Last night witnessed a less tumultuous dream, but I don't recall the substance of it anymore.

Some nights ago, I dreamt about failing a University paper, and relived the stresses of planning for the next sitting just to obtain my first degree. I recall waking up amply relieved when I came back to myself and remembered that I had two degrees, one with direct honours and another postgraduate teaching degree!

On other nights, I remember short ditties that I had sung or heard and the tune stays with me for at least a couple of minutes after wakefulness.

Let's see if I can encapsulate this in a nutshell....

Yesterday, I chanced upon an inspiring book(more like a booklet actually) summarising the elements required for success, happiness and self-actualised fulfilment.

Unfortunately, well near the top of that list was 'The ability to make friends/reach out to/communicate with others'.

My heart sank a little when I read this, but as I kept reading, I steeled myself with the resolve to go for it.

True, I don't have many opportunities to interact with people apart from a popular electronic webpage(which I shall refer to as 'F').

Frankly, I'm not that interested in people per se.If you were to ask me to list ten things that I'm most interested in, 'other people' won't make it into that list, not by a long shot!

I surmise that this disinclination is due to my parents showing little personal interest in me when I was just months out of the womb, and throughout my formative years.

Thus I would like to propose a saying(if it hasn't been coined already): The child is a mirror of his parents' attitude towards it.Something like 'a chip of the old block'.

This also(I think) explains my total disinclination to starting a family, as I know in my heart that I'll do a shoddy job of raising a child, and probably be a photocopier of another version of me.


Why am I so 'abnormal'(although I fancy myself extraordinary), as I opened myself to the possibility of being in my last post?

Because for most normal people, if one parent is a jerk(being aloof, given to alcoholism, abusive etc), they usually have the other parent to run to and seek solace in.

For my case, both parents had been equally aloof and verbally denigrating, so the only person I could seek solace in was me. And hence my introvertedness.

It's a knee-jerk reaction: I just can't help being like this simply because it was programmed into my brain and psyche by my childhood experiences.

I have GOT to write something...or at least initiate a project soon...

Eight months of home-tutoring, over 600 accumulated hours,during which I had to go to the pupils' home only twice, has been enough to sustain my self-confidence thus far, but I feel that that self-esteem that I've fought so hard and struggled for such a lengthy period of time to achieve(let alone maintain), slowly slipping, as a growing sense of the meaninglessness of my life, lived as it has been, just surviving and satisfying my most rudimentary needs from day to day,starts to encroach on my perspective of Life.

The urge to start writing a book is growing stronger, but irritatingly, it's not strong enough to impel me to pen down more than two hundred words a day.

I tried baking, and then singing, with tutoring and playing online games becoming prominent filler activities, along with trading the stockmarket.

As I see it, while my contemporaries raise their children and run the marathon race called 'marriage' while going back and forth from and to a place where they do something called 'work'(which may or may not wear them down-usually it does) just to earn enough money to live as well as they can possibly aspire to, I have none of these things as the urge to do the first two has never seized me, nor even appealed to me, since the age that people are supposed to develop such urges, and even way before that. And after losing my job for over a year, & then replacing it with something that is far more volatile, but removes overbearing authority, I feel, not so much 'empty' of all those things, as aimless.

I have no car(depending on my mother for all my transportation needs) nor a roof over my head which I can call my own, but strangely, I've never felt the need to own either!

Am I unusual? Most definitely.

Am I abnormal? Could be that.

Am I crazy(as my 'father' called me recently in a heated fit of an argument)? I doubt it.

Am I solely responsible for the way I am? My doubts are even greater as to this.